posted
I feel odd putting this up after the latest series of spamming, but whatever. I also have something to discuss and no one who has kept track of my posts could possibly confuse me for OSC
Anyhow, the basic premise is that a terrorist event in the near future assassinates a President and starts a civil war. Its interesting, but a bit ominous.
The reason is this, OSC has never been known as a left-wing writer. Far from it, but from what I've read (most of the Enderverse novels, his time travel book, and Enchantment), it seems like OSC is having an increasing amount of trouble keeping his politics out of his writing. The slide can be illustrated by Ender's Game (which seemed pretty neutral), moving to Xenocide (where the Chinese were psuedo-exotic people with a few bad tendencies IIRC) and moving onto the Bean novels where China goes and invades India and most of southeast Asia(!).
But this latest book (intro) seems to take the cake. With praising for an unnamed President (who seems awfully like Bush), a really strange depiction of university (as dominated by brainwashing left wing profs), and what seems to be leading into a civil war between a left-wing conspiracy in charge of the government against militia based in the red states, it just seems a bit extreme.
Now, I'm still interested and what is online of the book seems interesting, but then again I've always had fun reading about POVs very different from my own.
I'm just wondering if anyone else has noticed the same trend or has any thoughts on reading books by very opinionated authors. (an example on the left-wing side in Canada would be Robert Sawyer, who can't seem to write a book without taking a jab at the US, which is fun, but still)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Card has a whole website devoted to angry political rants. But I stopped reading his fiction years ago for only tangentially related reasons (I didn't like his books anymore).
The list of sf authors who have succumbed to some pernicious meme that takes over their fiction is long and interesting. Go check out James Hogan's site for an extreme example.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Then you got Heinlein, if you want blatant rght-wing haranguing. Or Melissa Scott's gay'n'lesbian sci-fi (goodies=gay, baddies=straight, Christ only knows what she made happen in the Voyager and DS9 books she wrote).
posted
Surely Heinlein's pernicious meme was incest, in the sense I am thinking. He was able to write books featuring his politics that weren't polemics. I guess. Well, Starship Troopers?
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Yeah, I recently read "time enough for love" by Heinlein. The length that man goes to to contrive fantastical situations that justify, or even encourage incest is a little disturbing.
posted
Oh, good, so I'm not the only one. I always wondered if he had any children; far as I've been able to find out he didn't. Whether that explains his ability to get behind the concept so enthusiastically, I don't know (what age did his mother live to/how old was he when she died are also some things that I've wondered).
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What freaked me out the most is the story that had a brother & sister specifically engineered to procreate without any genetic side effects...Why? I have no idea.
In an odd way I sort of perfer his earlier work like Puppet Masters, Starship Troopers & Citizen of the Galaxy (the last one being a favourite). I may not agree with his "Liberal Fascism" (or what ever you call it) but the narratives were far more compelling than his later stuff which had a tendency to ramble on a bit.
posted
Almost everybody likes "young adult novel" Heinlein more than late period Heinlein, in my experience.
I read Gene Wolfe's collection Starwater Strains not long ago, after finally finishing his novel Soldier of the Mist and deciding it was my very favorite thing ever, and there were a few stories that seemed to revolve around how taxes were bad, and I did a little googling and found Wolfe has a few beliefs that I find a little strange. (Not including his religion, which I don't share, but don't find strange.) But Wolfe is so fantastically talented that it doesn't matter, and anyway it doesn't seem to come up much. From the same source I also read that he is apparently fond of Lamarckism, which I found much more bizarre.
Registered: Mar 1999
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